The pelican[48] in her piety, or feeding her young with her blood, was often represented in the Mediæval Church, being considered a mystical emblem of Christ, and a type of the Holy Eucharist. Several representations of it are to be seen in St. Mary Abchurch, the living of which is in the gift of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It was the device of the famous Bishop Foxe, to whom I have alluded in my account of the Three Kings (_ante_); and as such appears on the woodwork of the banqueting hall of Durham Castle, with his usual motto, ‘Est Deo gracia;’ and on the string course of the choir of St. Saviour’s, Southwark. He died anno 1528. Heywood in his play of Edward IV. (4to. 1600), mentions a pelican sign in Lombard Street:-- ‘Here’s Lombard Street, and here’s the Pelican; And here’s the Phœnix in the Pelican’s nest.’ And by a curious coincidence, at the present day there are the signs of a Pelican and a Phœnix in Lombard Street, both belonging to famous insurance offices. The house[49] occupied by the latter was built for Sir Charles Asgill, Lord Mayor in 1757. A bas-relief, similar in style to that last described, is the Swan with collar and chain, inserted below a second-floor window of No. 37, Cheapside, which stands at the north-east corner of Friday Street. This is on the site of the Nag’s Head tavern, whose projecting sign appears in a well-known print of the procession of Mary de Medici on a visit to her daughter, Queen Henrietta Maria--an interesting record of the appearance of Cheapside before the Great Fire. The sign was almost opposite Cheapside Cross. The Nag’s Head was the supposed scene of the consecration of Archbishop Parker, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1559. This story is refuted in Strype’s Life of Parker; it probably arose from a fact mentioned by Fuller, that the commissioners who confirmed Parker’s election (at St. Mary le Bow Church ten days before the consecration), afterwards dined together at the Nag’s Head close by. The present building must have been erected soon after the Great Fire, for a staircase, to which there is access from Friday Street, evidently dates from that century. Indeed, in the Creed Collection at the British Museum (vol. xiii.) there is a newspaper cutting said to be from the _Builder_, but without a date, in which it is, no doubt erroneously, asserted that the house was there before the year 1666, and remained standing when all around was swept away, and that inside traces of the fire may be observed on the massive beams. The Chained Swan is undoubtedly of heraldic origin. Ritson says it was not customary to use the English language at court till King Edward III. on the occasion of a celebrated tournament, held at Canterbury in 1349, placed on his shield the device of a white swan, with the legend: ‘Hay, hay the wythe Swan, By Gode’s soule I am thy man.’